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Author Topic: ReEx Builder and Path Editor  (Read 7404 times)

kevinjmills

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ReEx Builder and Path Editor
« on: December 05, 2008, 01:55 PM »
Hi All,  Just wanted to share a couple of simple, but useful utilities that I've put together.  I'm the author of both programs and they are free to use donationware titles.  Screen shots courtesy of ScreenShot Captor (thanks Mouser!).  Both programs are written in C# and use .NET 2.0.  Neither program contains any adware, spyware, or any other malware, and do not attempt to surreptitiously connect to any websites.  Both are essentially portable, but do require the .NET 2.0 framework be installed.  Both were initially written more than a year ago, but have recently been overhauled and updated.  I hope you find one or both utilities useful.


RegEx Builder
The first offering is RegEx Builder.  I built this tool because I do not use regular expressions on a regular basis and so I end up "relearning" them every time I need one.  This utility makes it very simple to build expressions on an as needed basis, and to save expressions, and expression building blocks, for future use.  The key usability feature of RegEx Builder is that it evaluates your expression against target text in real-time as your are editing the expression, thus eliminating the old (and seemingly endless) edit-compiler-test development loop.  Another simple, but immensely useful feature is the ability to break the regular expression onto multiple lines for clarity.  Expressions under construction, target text, and options can be saved to and loaded from files.  A help file is included.

regexbuilder.jpgReEx Builder and Path Editor



Path Editor

The second offering is Path Editor.  If you've ever needed to modify the system PATH environment variable on a Windows machine then you know how sub-optimal the built-in tools are.  In my professional software development life (the one that pays the mortgage) this is something that happens a lot due to the nature of the work.  Path Editor is just a friendly easy-to-use front end for editing the system and user PATH environment variables.  It supports full drag-and-drop operations to: rearrange items in either list; move items from one list to the other; and drop directories from dragged in from Windows Explorer into either list.

PathEditor2.jpgReEx Builder and Path Editor



Above I stated that neither program connects surreptitiously to any website.  In the interest of full disclosure, each application will, if you choose, start a browser and go to my Paypal page for making donations.  This, of course, is entirely under your control.


--Kevin

mouser

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Re: ReEx Builder and Path Editor
« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2008, 01:59 PM »
Great to see you sharing your stuff with us Kevin  :up: :up:

housetier

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Re: ReEx Builder and Path Editor
« Reply #2 on: December 05, 2008, 04:41 PM »
Too bad RegEx Builder doesn't run with mono. I get this error message:

housetier@io:~/.wine/drive_c/Programme/RegEx Builder$ mono RegExBuilder.exe
Unhandled Exception: System.ArgumentException: Value does not fall within the expected range.
  at System.Windows.Forms.Layout.TableLayout.CalculateControlPositions (System.Windows.Forms.TableLayoutPanel panel, Int32 columns, Int32 rows) [0x00000]
  at System.Windows.Forms.TableLayoutPanel.GetPreferredSizeCore (Size proposedSize) [0x00000]
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.GetPreferredSize (Size proposedSize) [0x00000]
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.get_PreferredSize () [0x00000]
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.set_MinimumSize (Size value) [0x00000]
  at RegExBuilder.RegexForm.InitializeComponent () [0x00000]
  at RegExBuilder.RegexForm..ctor () [0x00000]
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) RegExBuilder.RegexForm:.ctor ()
  at RegExBuilder.Program.Main () [0x00000]

Mono is the .NET implementation for linux.

kevinjmills

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Re: ReEx Builder and Path Editor
« Reply #3 on: December 05, 2008, 06:20 PM »
I've never tried it under mono.  My first guess might be, and this is just a guess, that maybe mono doesn't support setting the column width on a listview to -2 to auto-fit the width to the control.  I could be wrong though.  (Edited)  Looking at the stack trace again, I'm guessing it's not related to the -2 setting, but to something in the single table-layout panel that I'm using.  Not sure how to debug it, but I'll look into it a little.  It would be good to see it run under mono.

I've also received a report that RegEx Builder, for some reason, requires admin rights on Vista to run properly.  That is certainly not the intent so I'm trying to track that down too.
--Kevin
« Last Edit: December 05, 2008, 06:23 PM by kevinjmills »

kevinjmills

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Re: ReEx Builder and Path Editor
« Reply #4 on: December 05, 2008, 06:59 PM »
--Kevin

mouser

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Re: ReEx Builder and Path Editor
« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2008, 07:55 PM »
Kevin.. Well while you are in a philosophical mood, you might as well see:
https://www.donation...Other/Spc/index.html
(system path commander, from 2005)

 :huh:

ps.
don't get discouraged -- there are few program ideas out there that haven't been done and redone over and over.  each project we embark on makes us a better programmer and helps us discover new things.

kevinjmills

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Re: ReEx Builder and Path Editor
« Reply #6 on: December 05, 2008, 08:21 PM »
Oh! I'm not discouraged.  I do these little projects primarily to learn something about new technologies, languages, frameworks, etc...  My main problems is that I have for too many interests (both in and out of software) and not nearly enough time to learn them all, much less develop any real expertise in them.  My real expertise is embedded systems programming (pure old fashioned C) and program management, which I've been doing for almost 20 years now.  I never thought I'd see the day that C was considered an antiquated language. :) I do this stuff for fun and just to keep up with the times. :)  I'm constantly awestruck by the quality and quantity of available free software out there.

Right now I'm installing Vista Ultimate and Visual Studio 2008 in a VPC2007 virtual machine so that I can debug why RegEx Builder is wanting admin rights.  Just another Friday night... :)
--Kevin

kevinjmills

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Re: ReEx Builder and Path Editor
« Reply #7 on: December 06, 2008, 01:32 AM »
So, after installing Vista Ultimate and Visual Studio 2008 in Virtual PC I now know why RegExBuilder wants admin rights to run on Vista.  My installer places several example files and expression files in a couple of sub directories in the application install location.  This works perfectly well on XP, but not so well on Vista because Vista requires admin rights to access the files at run time.  The obvious solution seem to be to move the data files to the All Users Application Data directory, but that apparently has the same limitation under Vista.  Any advice on how to configure the setup project to put these files someplace where non-admins can access them?
--Kevin